Team Building - Hiring Talent

Rob Hayes Partner First Round Capital

Hayes discusses red flags, things that would make him not want to invest in a founder or entrepreneur.

Red flag: If he doesn’t have the best possible people as part of the initial team pre-funding. “When someone comes to [him] who has already surrounded [himself] with people [] who have quit good jobs [to come and work with him] because they’re so passionate about [] working with this person but also what they’re working on, [] that’s a good indicator.”

Red flag: “[] [The founder] is so enamored with [the] product [to the exclusion of addressing other important business elements.] There have been very few products that have been so good that the world just beat a path to their door [like Google or Facebook]. [] If someone is so enamored with their product that they can’t think through how things might change or they’re focused on one particular slice of the market and they only know that piece of the market and not a much bigger market [], I would be concerned about [that].”